I wish laws prohibiting "bait and switch" sales techniques applied to officials at the City of Salem.
Because yesterday I was notified that the cost of a public records request I submitted relating to the Proud Boys gun rally at Riverfront Park on May 1 had jumped from $302 to $900 -- after I'd already paid the $302.
Here's the message I got.
Read it and see if you think it's fair that a citizen activist like me should have to pay $900 to learn why, and how, two changes to a City of Salem parks reservation web page were made, along with getting copies of park reservation requests submitted between March 27 and April 30 of this year.
I've asked city staff to tell me why the cost of my public records request tripled. You can see screenshots of the new invoices and original invoice below.
The greatly increased cost came after I was told by city staff that I needed to know what I was trying to learn before my public records request could be fulfilled.
If I don't pay the additional $597, I can't get the public records I'm seeking. But I figured that the $302 I was originally told would be the cost to fulfill the public records request was close to being the final amount.
I'll ponder things over the Memorial Day weekend.
Interestingly, I just came across a story from 2014 in the Ann Arbor Independent newspaper about how Steve Powers, City Manager for the City of Salem, was involved in a public records controversy back when he was the Ann Arbor city administrator.
It looks like Powers still supports charging high fees for public records requests. Here's the new invoices that I got yesterday, along with the original invoice.
You can see that originally 4.5 hours of staff time was needed to fulfill my request. Now supposedly 16.5 hours of staff time are required. Something is wrong at the City of Salem. That's an absurd amount of time to fulfill a simple public records request.
If city officials don't want to be accused of engaging in a cover-up of how they handled the May 1 Proud Boys gun rally, they shouldn't be making it so difficult for concerned citizens to learn more about this.
I asked for a fee waiver because my public record request was in the public interest and my blog posts about the May 1 gun rally had attracted more than 7,000 page views, but the request was denied.
This wasn't a good day for American democracy. In fact, the past four-plus years -- ever since Trump was elected -- have all been bad days for our democracy.
Today Senate Republicans filibustered a bipartisan commission that would have looked into the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol, making recommendations to prevent something similar from ever happening again.
The commission was carefully modeled on the 9/11 commission.
Equal number of Democrats and Republicans. Subpoenas would require at least one Republican vote. Everything that Republicans had asked for, they got.
But Trump didn't want anyone looking into the insurrection, because he urged the crowd to march on the Capitol and did nothing to stop his supporters from breaking into the building, trashing legislator's offices, and injuring dozens of police officers.
So the Senate vote wasn't even close, 55 to 34.
Oh, guess I should mention that 55 is the number of senators who voted in favor of forming the commission to look into the January 6 insurrection. Only 34 senators opposed doing this.
Usually when 55 people want to do something and 34 people are against it, that thing gets done, because majority rules. Not in the United States Senate, though, where it takes 60 votes to pass a bill if just one senator threatens a filibuster.
This isn't the way a democracy is supposed to work.
The filibuster isn't part of the Constitution. The founders of our country wanted a majority to pass legislation not a super-majority, which gives a minority of legislators the power to stop bills from passing.
There's plenty of outrage being expressed at Republicans for doing what they did today. But outrage isn't going to stop Republicans from continuing to undermine our democracy.
Democrats need to use every bit of power at their disposal to ditch the filibuster. This may not be enough to save our democracy. However, it's our best chance.
In most or all of the states they control, Republicans are busy passing laws to make it more difficult for those who don't lean Republican to vote. They're also preparing to gerrymander redistricting following release of the 2020 census results.
If you’ve followed recent Democratic messaging, you’ll have heard that American democracy is under serious attack by the Republican Party, representing an existential threat to the country. If you’ve followed Democratic lawmaking, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the threat is actually a rather piddling one. The disconnect, in this case, isn’t attributable to Democratic embellishment, but to inexcusable complacency.
...Even with the filibuster removed or substantially modified, H.R. 1 and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act would still face barriers to becoming law. But to simply accept these barriers is nonsensical, the product of a fraudulent and conservative “realism” that is really defeatism by any other name. What, after all, is more important: the death of democracy, or the preservation of a Senate tradition that has been leveraged for decades to protect conservative minority rule?
Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, says that S 1, a vitally important bill to protect our democracy, will come up for a vote in late June. It will fail unless Democrats do away with the filibuster.
And the filibuster can't be eliminated unless Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, two Democratic senators, agree to do this.
So it isn't an exaggeration to say that American democracy rests on whether Manchin and Sinema, plus other wavering Democratic senators, decide to put the good of the country above their belief that bipartisanship is still alive and well in the Senate, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Here's a few Twitter tweets from my feed today that I'll end with.
After more than a year, Salem officials are poised to end sanctioned camping for those living in Wallace Marine and Cascades Gateway parks starting June 1.
But the problem that has plagued the city for years persists — there are not enough shelter beds, transitional housing or organized campsites to house the hundreds of people sleeping outside.
The plan is not to forcefully evict everyone from the parks come Tuesday but to slowly, over time, connect campers with resources as new shelter beds and housing options are added and then to clean up the emptied sections of the park.
Salem City Council voted unanimously Monday, with one councilor absent, to rescind the allowance for camping at the two parks and begin a slow rollback of the program.
Mass evictions and sweeps are not expected due to legal restrictions, lack of alternative shelters and officials' desire to not push people into camping on sidewalks downtown.
What the Salem City Council is trying to do makes sense, but probably it will end up irritating all of those involved in homeless issues.
-- Homeless people won't like being told to leave city parks, even though this will happen gradually.
-- Those who live near the Cascades Gateway and Wallace Marine parks won't like homeless camps remaining in them for the foreseeable future.
-- Advocates for the homeless won't like how few shelter/housing options exist for them in Salem.
-- Users of the parks currently sheltering homeless people won't like the destruction of public property by some of those in the camps.
This seems to be one of those social problems where giving one group what it wants leads to an unbalanced approach that really irks other involved groups.
So policymakers end up displeasing everybody to some extent, because that's the only viable option given available resources.
What's the solution? Increase the resources.
Given City of Salem budget limitations, it's unlikely that a lot of money for the homeless is going to be available locally, especially since city officials face a big bill to repair the damage caused to Wallace Marine and Cascades Gateway parks by the camps.
Getting big bucks from the State of Oregon also seems like a long shot. There's too many competing needs, and state government can't run a budget deficit.
That leaves the federal government.
President Biden's several trillion dollar infrastructure plan, the American Jobs Act, contains many billions for affordable housing and other measures that could help homeless people.
Last week, Biden’s American Jobs Act included $213 billion for affordable housing. This will produce or renovate one million affordable housing units and 500,000 homes for low/middle income home buyers. This money is on top of the $27.5 billion in emergency rental aid included in the American Rescue Plan.
Many of us have long argued that housing is as much part of “infrastructure” as roads and bridges. Now we have a president who agrees.
Thanks to pressure from activists, Biden’s housing platform also called for “providing Section 8 housing vouchers to every eligible family so that no one has to pay more than 30% of their income for rental housing.” Currently, nearly 75% of households eligible for Section 8 rental assistance do not receive it.
We finally have a president committed to ending widespread homelessness. And a grassroots housing movement to provide political support. Biden’s budget plans are not perfect; advocates sought nearly double the $40 billion allocated for public housing renovation– but it’s light years beyond what any prior president has proposed.
Federal funding is essential for ending homelessness. Now the key question is: Will cities open neighborhoods to ensure housing is available for the unhoused?
Well, my understanding is that the Oregon legislature already has mandated that cities relax zoning rules to allow multifamily housing in all residential areas, including single family neighborhoods. That's a step in the right direction.
And the City of Salem is engaged in a planning process aimed at revising the Comprehensive Plan that guides future development. That's another potential step in the right direction.
These steps, along with others, just need federal dollars to make them effective ways of markedly reducing Salem's homeless population. Hopefully the American Jobs Act will be approved by Congress this year, with or without Republican support.
After Ashley Carson Cottingham and Karina Guzman Ortiz had comfortable leads over their Salem-Keizer school board opponents on election night, their margins have shrunk considerably after additional votes were tallied.
Currently Cottingham has a slim 86 vote lead over Linda Farrington in the Zone 3 race, while Ortiz has a 279 vote lead over Mike Slagle in the Zone 5 race.
Cottingham and Ortiz are part of the progressive slate that competed against a conservative slate.
The other two progressives have insurmountable leads. Osvaldo Avila is up by 1,807 votes over Kari Zohner in the Zone 1 race. Maria Hinojos Pressey is up by 1,099 votes over Liam Collins.
So whether the seven member Salem-Keizer school board has a progressive or conservative majority comes down to the Cottingham-Farrington and Ortiz-Slagle races, since the three board members not up for election this year are conservatives.
A Salem Reporter story says that final vote results won't be released until June 2, following a two-week period when citizens whose votes weren't counted have the opportunity to "cure" ballots lacking a signature or having a signature that doesn't match the one on file.
Sure, I could wait for June 2 to come around and see whether Cottingham and Ortiz win, as I hope they will. But that's no fun for a political junkie like me.
So I did some analyzing of the uncounted votes reported in the Salem Reporter story with the goal of figuring out the likelihood that Farrington and Slagle will overcome the leads enjoyed by Cottingham and Slagle.
Bottom line: Farrington has a decent chance of beating Cottingham, though Cottingham is favored to win. Slagle, though, almost certainly won't beat Ortiz.
Here's how I reached those conclusions.
The Salem Reporter story says that Marion County Elections rejected 512 ballots due to signature problems. Either the ballot envelope wasn't signed (148) or the signature didn't match the one on file (364). Bill Burgess, the county clerk, estimated that about 2/3 of ballots came from voters within the school district boundaries.
Two-thirds of 512 is 341. So that's the number I used for potential additional Salem-Keizer school board votes from Marion County. The story also said that a few hundred ballots are uncounted in Polk County (West Salem) and about 100 Polk County ballots have signature issues.
Today Polk County reported 274 additional votes. So I'm assuming that accounts for the "few hundred." The Polk County tallies for the Salem-Keizer school board races didn't change, which means the 274 additional votes came from outside the school district boundary,
That leaves the other 100 ballots with signature issues. To date 47% of Polk County voters cast ballots in the Salem-Keizer school board races. One hundred times .47 equals 47, the number I used for potential additional Salem-Keizer school board votes from Polk County.
Adding 341 (Marion County) and 47 (Polk County) gave me an estimate of 388 for the total number of potential additional school district votes.
Since Farrington is 86 votes behind Cottingham, she needs to get 87 votes more than Cottingham from the pool of 388 potential additional ballots. To do this, Farrington would have to get a bit more than 61% of the 388 (237), leaving Cottingham with 39% (151).
Yet so far Farrington and Cottingham have been splitting the vote 50-50. Sure, it's possible Farrington would get more than 61% of the ballots with signature problems.
But there's no reason to think that these voters are different from the pool of voters whose ballots already have been counted. And every ballot with a signature problem that isn't resolved reduces the number of additional school district votes, making it more difficult for Farrington to close the 86 vote gap with Cottingham.
(For example, if there are only 300 ballots with signature problems that end up being counted, Farrington would need a bit less than 65% of them to surpass Cottingham's vote total.)
So this is why Cottingham is in a better position than Farrington to end up winning the Zone 3 school board seat. Obviously the fewer votes left to count, the harder it is to close a vote gap, even one as small as 86 votes. This requires getting a considerably larger percent of the vote than the 50-50 split in the current pool of 43,026 votes.
Slagle faces a much greater hurdle in his race with Ortiz. Behind by 279 votes with my estimate of 388 potential additional ballots, Slagle would have to get 86% of the 388 to overtake Ortiz' vote total. That isn't going to happen.
Just when I think I've seen all the weirdness Salem city officials are capable of, they surprise me with a fresh dose of absurdity.
On May 12, I submitted a public records request to the City of Salem. You can read it via this PDF file. Download Public records request PDF
I wanted to learn who authorized changes to the "Reserve a City Facility or Park" web page on or around March 27, 2021, and also who made the actual edits to that web page. Likewise, I asked for the same information regarding changes to the web page on or around April 30, 2021.
The reason I made the public records request was to learn how it was that the March 27 version of that web page said reservations were required for outdoor events in city parks as of May 1, a change from the previous open use policy that didn't require reservations.
In the lead-up to the controversial May 1 gun rights rally at Riverfront Park where Proud Boys threatened people with expulsion if they didn't like their looks, Facebook posts noted that the City of Salem web page said the rally should have a permit. Which, it didn't have.
Then the web page changed on April 30, the day before the rally, to say that now reservations weren't required until May 31.
Inquiring minds (like mine) wanted to know how it was that the City of Salem web page said reservations were required as of May 1 for over a month (March 27 to April 30), then changed to May 31 just before the May 1 gun rally, which meant now the rally didn't need a permit.
City officials such as City Manager Steve Powers provided conflicting reasons for this.
First the May 1 reservation date supposedly was a typo. But I debunked that theory in "Typogate adds a twist to Proud Boys gun rally." Then, in response to a question from Councilor Andersen at a city council meeting, City Manager Powers said the web page was incorrect and poorly worded.
Well, that web page sat there for 34 days, saying reservations were required as of May 1. Kind of hard to believe that city staff would fail to notice the supposed error for that length of time, then burst into action on the day before the gun rally to change the required reservation date to May 31.
It seemed that it would be easy to tell me who authorized the March 27 and April 30 changes to the web page, and also who made the actual edits. This would help answer the question of whether the May 1 reservation date really was an error.
But on May 17 I got this message from city staff.
Specific search terms and email information (department and/or staff person) is needed for our IT staff to provide responsive documents as the current request is too broad.
Huh? Too broad? Actually my public records request was highly specific.
But what amused me the most was the instruction that, in order for the City of Salem to tell me who authorized and made two sets of edits to the web page, I'd have to tell them the email information of who authorized and made those edits.
Sure seems like someone at the Salem City Hall is a fan of Joseph Heller's World War II-based novel, Catch-22.
The catch in the title refers to a military concept that you couldn't fly dangerous missions if you were crazy, but if you asked to be relieved of the duty to fly on those missions because of your craziness, that showed you were rational, and thus not crazy. So, you had to keep on flying.
More generally, here's how a Catch-22 is described.
The Collins English Dictionary defines a catch-22 as follows: “If you describe a situation as a catch-22, you mean it is an impossible situation because you cannot do one thing until you do another thing, but you cannot do the second thing until you do the first thing.”
It is a dilemma or difficult circumstance from which there is no escape due to mutually conflicting or dependent conditions. It’s also come to stand for frustrating bureaucratic logic or rules.
I wrote back to the City of Salem saying they needed to try harder, since it shouldn't be difficult to give me the information I requested, given that web pages don't change by themselves.
Here’s a rather obvious suggestion. Find out who maintains and changes that web page. Ask that person who authorized the changes described in (1) and (2) of my Public Records Request. Get records related to that authorization.
When the person who authorized the changes is known, seek records regarding other city staff who communicated with the authorizing person about making the changes on or about March 27, 2021 and April 30, 2021. This should show the “chain of command,” so to speak, regarding how those changes to the web page came about.
Further, I’ve made many Public Records Requests. This is the first time I’ve been asked to know the information I wanted in order to have the Public Records Request fulfilled.
The good news is, as I was writing this blog post I was emailed an $302.70 invoice to fulfill my public records request.
So it looks like city staff figured out that I didn't need to know what I sought to learn before I could be told what I want to know.
Now, I'm hoping they will figure out that I deserve to have that $302.70 waived or reduced, since I'd asked for a fee waiver given that my records request is for a public purpose, not a private one.
But since I'm not a "real" journalist, just a dedicated unpaid blogger, I've never had the City of Salem agree to my repeated requests for public records fee waivers.
Yet, hey, just thought of this. Maybe I should stop providing rational reasons for why my public record requests are in the public interest and do a Catch-22 thing.
I could tell city officials that if they deny my fee waiver, this shows that my records request was in the public interest, since them not wanting to have the information I requested easily made available to citizens shows that the City of Salem has something to hide, which means it is in the public interest to have it known.
Bingo! Fee waiver has to be granted. (At least if Joseph Heller was in charge of deciding them.)
Today the Statesman Journal has an illuminating story by Natalie Pate about the Salem-Keizer school board races that will be decided on next Tuesday's election day, May 18.
There's two slates competing for votes on opposite sides of the political spectrum.
These are the moderate candidates that I urge you to cast your ballot for if you haven't voted already. (Take your ballot to a drop box, since it is too late to put it in the mail.)
The Statesman Journal story says about them:
Osvaldo Avila (Zone 1), Ashley Carson Cottingham (Zone 3), Karina Gúzman Ortiz (Zone 5) and María Hinojos Pressy (Zone 7) have been endorsed by more politically liberal groups, unions and PACs, such as Community for Salem-Keizer Schools, PCUN and Progressive Salem.
These candidates have focused on issues such as returning to schools safely and raising the district's graduation rates.
Yes, the story correctly notes that Avila, Cottingham, Ortiz, and Pressey have endorsements from more politically liberal groups.
But compared to the very conservative slate of candidates, these four are decidedly moderate.
Kari Zohner (Zone 1), Linda Farrington (Zone 3), Mike Slagle (Zone 5) and Liam Collins (Zone 7) have been endorsed by more politically conservative groups and political action committees, such as Protect Kids, Oregon Right to Life and Marion+Polk First.
These candidates have focused their priorities on immediately reopening schools full-time and bringing back school resource officers.
Oregon Right to Life and the closely associated Protect Kids and Marion+Polk First have pumped a lot of money into trying to make the Salem-Keizer School Board a platform to promote extreme right-wing policies.
Even though school board members have little-to-no say on reproductive health education in local schools, the Oregon Right to Life's PAC has invested heavily into Salem-Keizer school board elections for the past several races. This year is no different.
Oregon Right to Life and other PACs are helping some of the conservative-slate candidates pay off debts and have paid off tens of thousands of dollars to Intisar Strategies, owned by David Kilada, the former political director of Oregon Right to Life.
Intisar Strategies, which is running the four candidates' campaigns, is described as a political consulting and marketing firm dedicated to advancing center-right candidates, issues and causes in Oregon.
The Protect Kids PAC, supporting the same slate of candidates, released mailers saying to "vote for our conservative values."
You know, I'm old fashioned. I don't believe students should be held hostage to conservative values.
Growing up in the long ago times (1950s and 60s), back then school boards were focused on, no big surprise, students.
But now right-wingers have set a goal to bring their Trumpist ideology to local races like school board elections.
It's super important to not let the Oregon Right to Life slate of candidates succeed in making the Salem-Keizer school board a branch of the extreme conservatism that is trying to subvert democracy in states across the nation.
Vote wisely. Again, I recommend Osvaldo Avila (Zone 1), Ashley Carson Cottingham (Zone 3), Karina Gúzman Ortiz (Zone 5) and María Hinojos Pressey (Zone 7).
Ten days after the May 1 gun rally at Riverfront Park where gun-toting Proud Boys threatened citizens and journalists with expulsion from the park, city officials keep changing their story about why a permit wasn't required for the rally.
As I said in "Typogate" adds a twist to Proud Boys rally, at first City Councilor Tom Andersen was told that a typo on the city web site caused a page to say that May 1 was the date permits would be required for events in city parks, since a missing "3" would have made the date May 31.
But I pointed out in that blog post that on March 27 the web page had changed from saying "Due to COVID-19, parks and other City facilities are not available for reservation" to "Due to COVID-19, parks and other city facilities are not available for reservation through April 30, 2021. Reservations are being accepted for outdoor events in parks occurring May 1, 2021 or after."
So that did away with the typo excuse, since in addition to saying that reservations were required as of May 1, the page said that the open use/no reservation period ended April 30. Hard to see how someone could accidentally type "April 30" when they meant "May 30."
At yesterday's City Council meeting, Councilor Andersen asked City Manager Steve Powers to discuss the confusion over whether the May 1 Proud Boys gun rally should have been required to have a permit.
I made a transcript of the Andersen-Powers exchange from a video. Here's the transcript. The video follows. I consider Powers's explanation to be weak, bordering on unbelievable, for reasons I'll explain below.
City Councilor Tom Andersen: I want to ask a question, and then I’ll have some comments afterwards, probably a little bit of both.
Director Fernandez specifically referred to the incident that happened on May 1. And I can’t speak for Councilor Nordyke, but that may have something to do with the genesis of her motion.
There’s been some confusion in the community about the date that permits were to be reinstituted.
There was a city web site page that said permits needed to be applied for and would issue on May 1 and after. But I have been told by city staff that permits would take place on May 31 and after.
And that’s created a whole lot of confusion around the May 1 event because there are people who say look at the city web site. It says you’ve got to have permits on May 1.
And there wasn’t a permit for the circus that happened there on May 1. I’d like City Manager Powers, if you would, to respond and then I’ll have some other comments.
City Manager Steve Powers: There never was any intention for permits to start before Memorial Day. That web page, that section of the web page that’s been referred to, it was incorrect and frankly also poorly worded before it was corrected.
But in my update reports to you, available publicly, information that staff would share with people inquiring, to respond to an earlier question, yes, we are getting inquiries, people requesting dates to reserve, and in those conversations with staff and with individuals, it was always no earlier than May 31.
Now I do want to emphasize, no earlier than May 31. Part of the review was certainly based upon feedback from councilors regarding we need to look at resuming permits.
It was also based frankly on the Iron Man being interested in Salem, a significant boost to our community. And it was based upon at that time what seemed to be a positive, in a good way, trend with the disease.
That was before Polk and Marion slipped back into extreme risk, which fortunately we’re now back into high risk. This is still very much a moving target, and I think the key will be that Covid compliance, those safety plans for public events, that will be critical for anyone that is reserving our parks or a portion of a park for a public event.
Andersen: Thank you Mr. City Manager. This just points out to me how unfortunate this was, because staff was operating under the assumption that permits wouldn’t happen until May 31 and beyond, but the web site said May 1.
And there are people in the community rightfully concerned about no permit for what happened on May 1, even though the web site said that.
This is the video I used to make the transcript.
This is my critique of what City Manager Powers said. I'll phrase my criticisms in the form of questions that I'll email to Powers for his response.
(1) You claim there never was any intention for permits to start before Memorial Day, May 31. Yet according to the Internet Archive Way Back Machine, on March 27, 2021 the City of Salem "Reserve a City Facility or Park" web page changed to say that the open use period would end on April 30, with reservations required as of May 1.
Web pages don't change by themselves. Someone edited the page.
I'm assuming this someone received an order to change the page from a supervisor or higher-up. Who issued that order? Knowing this person's name will go a long way toward learning whether there truly was an intention for permits to start before May 31.
(2) You claim that the web page was poorly worded before it was corrected. Comparing the current page and the page as it was from March 27 to April 30, the wording is almost exactly the same aside from the different dates.
What did you mean by "poorly worded"? Also, who is responsible for the content of the "Reserve a City Facility or Park" web page? Obviously this could be the same person I asked the name for in question (1) above.
(3) In your response to Councilor Andersen you seemed to say that city staff responded to inquiries about park reservations by saying the date permits were needed was May 31. Since the city web page said May 1 for over a month, March 27 - April 30, it's hard to believe that no one ever said something like, "I saw on your web site that reservations are needed after May 1."
Are you claiming that no City of Salem employee noticed that the web site said the open use period ended April 30 for the month-plus that language was on the page in question?
(4) Since the supposed May 1 error was on the city web site from March 27 to April 30, who made the decision to change the web page to say "May 31" on the day before the May 1 Proud Boys gun rally?
Hopefully you can understand how suspicious this looks, since social media posts about the upcoming rally were noting the lack of a permit for the rally, given that the city web site was saying that a permit was needed for park events on May 1 and after.
Then, after the May 1 date had been on the city web page for over a month, the date suddenly changes the day before the rally. Knowing who authorized the change to May 31 will help citizens understand why this was done on April 30.
(5) In your response to Councilor Andersen you imply that citizens shouldn't trust what they find on the City of Salem web site, but rather rely on statements you make at City Council meetings. Do you actually believe this?
I ask because few people watch City Council meetings, and even fewer accurately remember what happens at them. By contrast, hugely more people use the City of Salem web site to learn city policies and obtain other useful information.
Yet you made no apology for the web site saying something different from what you reportedly were stating in public meetings.
In fact, your response made it seem as if the web site saying May 1 was something that happened through a random quantum fluctuation or something -- an accident that no one should have taken seriously, since they should listen to what the City Manager says, not what the City of Salem web site states.
The Salem Police Department has a new chief, Trevor Womack. But it doesn't have a new way of going about policing.
That's a big problem.
Hopefully Chief Womack is up to the task of carrying out needed reforms, restoring confidence in the department, and altering the mission of the department in light of a national movement to shift policing from a militaristic warrior model to a peacekeeper guardian model.
This is a complex job. It will take a lot of wisdom to carry out.
Womack, along with other police chiefs, has to deal with a lengthy history of policing in America being dominated by a mentality that views officers as akin to soldiers fighting a war against criminals, rather than as citizens helping to bring about peace in their community.
These different approaches to policing were on full display on May 1 when Salem police chose to sit by while the extremist Proud Boys militia group threatened people in a public park while serving as supposed "security" for a gun rights rally.
Well, what I mean by full display is that the warrior crime-fighting model was plainly evident, while the guardian peacekeeper model was notable by its absence.
No uniformed Salem police officers were seen anywhere near the gun rally. So the Proud Boys were free to threaten several people with dire consequences if they didn't leave the rally area, even though the rally had no permit and was being held in a public park.
The Proud Boys also threatened a journalist, telling him he couldn't observe the rally from a close-in location, but only from farther away in the park.
Yet the Salem Police Department considered that they did a great job, issuing a misleading statement that said, in part, that because no criminal behavior by the Proud Boys was observed by their officers, how they handled the gun rally event was a success.
What irked many people, including those threatened and harassed by the Proud Boys, was that uniformed Salem police didn't see the wrongdoing being done by militia members because they chose not to come close to the gun rally area.
This is the opposite of what a guardian would do, what a peacekeeper would do.
If Salem police were acting as guardians, they would have had a substantial presence at the gun rally. Then they would have seen a group of Proud Boys going up to people they didn't like, telling those people they had to leave or something bad would happen to them.
A guardian wants to be clearly visible so citizens can reach out to them for help. But a warrior is only worried about overt criminal behavior.
So Salem police ignored the threats being made to people in a public park, because their focus was on waiting for the Proud Boys to do something dramatically criminal.
Apparently no one at the Salem Police Department thought that citizens who wanted to observe the speakers at the gun rally needed to be guarded against threats being made by armed members of the Proud Boys militia group that took part in the January 6 insurrection at the nation's capitol.
Thus those citizens were left to fend for themselves, while undercover police officers reportedly were in the park, but obviously doing something else than guarding the rights of people watching a gun rally in a public space.
If uniformed officers had been at the rally, those threatened by the Proud Boys could have yelled to them, saying, "Officer, come over here. There's a problem." That's how a guardian would have acted: walking over to the person being threatened with expulsion and telling the Proud Boys, "You can't do that."
For some reason the Salem Police Department can't understand why people were so upset when groups of armed Proud Boys wearing tactical vests roamed around the gun rally area of Riverfront Park telling citizens that if they didn't leave, something bad would happen to them.
A spokesman for the department even said that it was OK for the Proud Boys to order people to leave the park, according to a Statesman Journal story.
Upkes also pointed to the nuance of whether escorting people out of the park was illegal. Simply telling someone to leave the public area — and even walking with them — isn't necessarily a crime. But pairing that order with the threat of violence, menacing or harassment is, he said.
Well, that's exactly what happened -- threats of violence, menacing, harassment. But since Salem police chose to take a "see no evil" approach to the Proud Boys, they didn't observe the threats made to several people observing the gun rally.
It would have been so simple to have a half dozen or so uniformed police officers standing at the edges of the gun rally, ready to step in if the Proud Boys or anyone else started to cause trouble.
Yet the Salem Police Department chose not to take this guardian approach.
Were they afraid to confront the Proud Boys? Did they feel that these armed militia members in tactical vests looked like us, so posed no problem? How badly would the Proud Boys have needed to act before Salem police would have done something?
This was a failure by the Salem Police Department. Hopefully lessons will be learned from it.
Like, it would have been much better to prevent trouble by having a guardian police presence at the gun rally, rather than sitting back and waiting for an obvious crime to be committed requiring a warrior response.
Just six days after the Salem Police Department did absolutely nothing to prevent the Proud Boys extremist militia group from threatening a journalist and other citizens observing a gun rally in a public park, today a couple of Proud Boys banned media from taking photos or video in front of a public building in downtown Salem.
And why wouldn't they?
The Salem Police Department and other city officials have coddled the Proud Boys, seemingly because they're afraid of these armed right-wingers. The Proud Boys now know that Salem is a place these white supremacists are welcome in.
Here's some of the tweets journalist Tim Gruver shared about an anti-mask protest the two Proud Boys attended. If this depresses you, scroll further down for some Gruver tweets about a left-wing protest today against Salem Police Department inaction and racism in our city.
(His "no one escorted out" tweet refers to the Proud Boys forcing some people to leave the gun rights rally in Riverfront Park, even though the rally had no permit and was in a public place.)
If there's one thing I've learned from quite a few years of delving into goings-on at the City of Salem, it is that often what city officials claim to be true, actually isn't.
Sure, sometimes that discrepancy can be attributed to a honest mistake. However, I know for a fact that sometimes City of Salem staff purposely shade the truth in a CYA (Cover Your Ass) fashion.
Lying is a blunter term than "shade the truth," of course.
As I've written about in two previous blog posts (here and here), how the Salem Police Department handled a May 1 gun rally at Riverfront Park where the gun-toting violent right-wing insurrectionist Proud Boys provided "security" left a lot to be desired, to put it mildly.
A statement issued by the Police Department said "the City of Salem did not issue a permit for the event due to pandemic restrictions. Parks, however, remain open for public use on a first-come first-served basis."
Well, it sure seems that this excuse for why a permit wasn't issued isn't true. I'll explain.
Up until April 30, the day before the May 1 gun rally, a City of Salem web page said that permits are being accepted for outdoor events in parks occurring May 1, 2021 or after. But on April 30 the permit date was changed to May 31 -- taking away the need for the gun rally to have a permit.
Salem City Councilor Tom Andersen said in a post-rally KMUZ interview that the reason for this last-minute change was a "typo" on the web page. Namely, that a "3" was omitted from May 1, which should have been May 31.
UPDATE: A commenter on this post just left a great observation that I'd somehow missed. This seemingly puts to rest the "typo" explanation.
If it was truly a typo then why did they set the end of the “open use” period to April 30th? If it was a typo it should state no permit required through May 30th and on May 1 [typo should be 31st] permits will be required.
So that explanation, which I assume Andersen got from a city official, had nothing to do with pandemic restrictions. That makes the Police Department statement wrong, but not outrageously wrong.
Hey, I'm a writer.
I hate typos, though I make them frequently. I find typos on government web sites all the time, so at first resonated with that explanation for the April 30 change to the date a permit was required from May 1 to May 31.
However, I was curious how long this supposed "typo" had been hanging out on the City of Salem web page.
I decided to fire up the Internet Archive Way Back Machine. Below is a screenshot of how that City of Salem web page appeared on September 19, 2020 and March 27, 2021.
You can see that on September 19, 2020 the City of Salem said "Due to COVID-19, parks and other City facilities are not available for reservation."
But on March 27, 2021 the page had changed to say "Due to COVID-19, parks and other city facilities are not available for reservation through April 30, 2021. Reservations are being accepted for outdoor events in parks occurring May 1, 2021 or after."
Thus the Proud Boys gun rally should have reserved space at Riverfront Park for the May 1 event. There was plenty of warning about this requirement, since at least since March 27 the City of Salem web site said that after May 1 a reservation was needed for an event.
So the supposed “typo” that City officials are saying caused the change on April 30 had been in existence for over a month.
It sure seems like some people in Salem would have been inquiring about parks reservations during that time period, or that a City of Salem employee would have noticed the May 1 date, if on March 27 the city really had meant to only require permits after May 31.
Otherwise, we have to believe that no one applied for a reservation from March 27 to April 30, even though almost certainly summer weddings and other nice-weather gatherings were being planned at that time.
Someone in the Public Works Department, or City Manager Steve Powers, needs to explain how it is that the May 1 date was on the web site for over a month before it was changed the day before the gun rights rally.
You can see that the May 1 date occurs in two places on the March 27 page, so the “typo” was repeated twice. This makes it more unlikely that it was actually a typo.
I also noticed that whoever edited the March 27 web page changed "City" to "city" several times (correctly, in my opinion), which seems to show a certain carefulness and competence, further reducing the possibility that May 1 was a typo that somehow remained on the City of Salem web page for more than a month.
City Manager Steve Powers has some explaining to do.
Who authorized the March 27 change to the City of Salem web page saying that a permit/reservation was needed for a park event to be held May 1 or after? Is there documentation of what date was given to the web page editor, May 1 or May 31?
Who authorized the April 30 change to the City of Salem web page changing the effective date for a required permit/reservation to May 31? Is there documentation of why this change was made on that particular date, since it was the day before the Proud Boys gun rally on May 1?
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